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VANCOUVER—The chaotic opening of the first Costco in China sure got people talking. Swarms of customers filled the aisles, and traffic around the store in the Shanghai suburb was backed up for blocks, forcing the U.S. shopping giant to close after only a few hours of business.

Pictures showed people grabbing packets of roast chicken and elbowing past other shoppers at the store. Local news reports said the retailer offered discounts as deep as 60 per cent on some products.

When I watched the videos, I just shrugged. Consumerist hype is simply a part of daily life in modern China.

It’s understandable why Costco’s successful debut might puzzle some: Aren’t Chinese citizens angry about the U.S.-China trade war or the detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of U.S. authorities?

In 2017, worries about nationalist Chinese boycotts of Korean goods over the deployment of a controversial missile defence system wiped out billions of dollars of market value for Korea’s largest retail companies in just a few days. But less than a year later, exports to China from South Korea actually reached an all-time high in October 2018.

In China, like in many places, the appeal of a good deal often overrides patriotic allegiances.

For years, while working as a correspondent in Beijing, I resisted the urge to shop with zeal like many of the urbanites around me. But on my last day in China, I had several months’ salary to pare down in a hurry since my bank wouldn’t let me make a wire transfer to Canada without official documents I had no time to acquire.

So I morphed into the stereotype, a walking embodiment of “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics,” flashing my red bills bearing the portrait of Chairman Mao, embracing my consumerist passion in an authoritarian Communist state. Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are all banned in the country, but materialistic culture thrives on domestic apps and e-commerce sites.

Like many middle- and upper-class Chinese, I spent mostly on foreign-imported goods. I got designer sunglasses, a new MacBook, some jewelry from Pandora and fancy Adidas sportswear. For years, I had only window-shopped in the flashy Sanlitun Village in central Beijing, sporting my thrift-store finds while my eyes watered at the price tags.

But the longest lineup in Sanlitun Village was outside a “cheese foam tea” store. Shopping bags in hand, I had to have a cup. Some North Americans are still “discovering” bubble tea, but in fashionable Chinese cities, bubbles are so passé. It’s all about the cheese foam tea.

It tasted like … whipped cream on tea. And cost eight Canadian dollars.

The oddly exhilarating experience mirrored photos I saw of more recent consumer crazes in China, like this June at Uniqlo stores, where shoppers stripped mannequins naked in their desperation to get T-shirts from a limited collection. But wait — isn’t Uniqlo a Japanese company? What about China’s grievances over brutal Japanese imperialism during World War Two?

We can’t underestimate the power of “group hype” among Chinese shoppers, said Manya Koetse, editor-in-chief of the website What’s on Weibo, which tracks China’s social trends.

“It’s unrelated to Western goods per se in my view, but getting a good deal, possibly getting something first before anyone else does, and then there’s social-media value too in being the first to visit a new park or mall,” Koetse told me.

I also reached out to Adam Ni, a Shanghai native, who acknowledged there are staunch nationalists among Chinese citizens, but international headlines can paint a misleading picture of typical Chinese sentiments.

“The market is just so massive that even with calls for nationalistic boycotts of certain brands, if the product is good, then to be honest the majority of the Chinese people just wouldn’t care,” said Ni, host of the “On China” podcast and China researcher at Australia’s Macquarie University.

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Costco’s business model of offering discounted products in bulk could have enduring popularity in China, said Sara Hsu, CEO of the China Rising Capital Forecast research firm.

“People already got used to the idea from Pinduoduo, a Chinese app where people can get together in a group and buy in bulk and distribute the goods among friends. It’s really hot right now,” Hsu said.

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In May, Costco executives had warned that costs for North American consumers could go up at its stores due to the ongoing trade war between the U.S. and China, with each side slapping down new tariffs.

“If Costco can make goods in China and sell them to domestic Chinese consumers, tariffs won’t apply, and that could offset loss of profit from tariffs on goods that have to be shipped out of China,” Hsu pointed out.

So rather than supporting a trade war, Chinese shoppers could end up keeping prices low in the United States — at least at one retailer. It’s a reminder that people in China are no different from consumers the world over in that their first loyalty is not to the state but the almighty yuan.

With a file from Bloomberg

Correction—Aug. 28, 2019: A previous version of this story stated that Adam Ni’s former role was China researcher at Australia’s Macquarie University. It is his current role.

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